The Girl in the Leaves (2 page)

TWO

Larry and Tina

1993—CENTRAL OHIO

Fifteen-year-old Larry Maynard was riding his bike down the street in his neighborhood
of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, when he spotted one of the cutest girls he’d ever seen. She
was blond, petite and athletic looking. Wanting to know more about her, Larry kept
pedaling his bike past her block, hoping each time to get another glimpse of her.
Before long he learned that she was the same age he was, and her name was Tina Herrmann.

Larry already knew Tina’s elder brother, and discovered that she was staying the summer
with him, though she usually lived in the small town of Pataskala, which was much
more of a farming community, about ten miles farther east. When school resumed in
the fall, Larry and Tina started hanging out together every chance they got, despite
the distance between their homes.

Along with being cute, Tina was outgoing and popular. She had an infectious laugh
and upbeat personality. Lots of teenagers, Larry included, liked being in Tina’s orbit.
Larry recalled, “There was just something about her that made you like her. Not just
me, but lots of kids at school. You hear about someone lighting up a room? Tina was
one of those people.”

After a few months, Larry and Tina began “officially” dating. They did the usual teenage
things—going to movies, sitting down to burgers and fries, cruising around with friends.
Though they didn’t go to the same high school, Larry and Tina were a couple. She liked
watching him play on the football and basketball teams.

Both took school seriously, and Larry and Tina adopted a work ethic early on in life.
Neither came from wealthy families, and they realized that no one was going to just
hand them money as they grew older. Larry began doing jobs with his grandfather, a
professional painter of houses and businesses. And Tina started working at a Kmart
store. Soon after graduating high school, they got an apartment together on the outskirts
of Columbus.

In April 1997, when Larry and Tina were both nineteen, Tina was rushed to the hospital
and gave birth to a baby girl, six weeks premature. Larry was stunned when he heard
the news at work. He had not expected the baby to be born so premature. Larry made
a beeline to the hospital, where he was presented with his baby daughter, only four
pounds, nine ounces, whom he and Tina named Sarah. Larry recalled, “She was so tiny.
It seemed incredible that she was alive. She looked so fragile. Sarah changed our
world. It was as if our responsibilities had just doubled. I was determined to give
Sarah the best life possible.”

Larry’s mother, Esther Maynard, recalled, “When my son called me to tell me I was
a grandma, I thought he was joking since it was April Fool’s Day.” She was surprised
as well that the baby was so premature.

Esther continued, “It was true, however, and my daughter and I hurried to the hospital
to see her. Sarah was premature, with lots of wires attached to her. Sarah was a fighter,
though, and became strong very quickly and continued to show strength every day.”

Despite Sarah’s small size, she began to flourish more every day. In some ways she
seemed to adopt Tina’s vibrant vitality early on. Friends and family “oohed” and “aahed”
over her, and she developed a happy quality that became the hallmark of her young
life.

Sarah gained more and more weight as each month progressed, and slowly but surely
the underweight baby turned into a healthy athletic girl, as her mother had been.
Running around the house, getting into mischief, but basically a good, happy child.
Sarah was a bundle of energy.

Two years later, Sarah was presented with a baby brother, whom Larry and Tina named
Kody. And just like his sister, Kody was also born tiny and premature. But once again,
just like Sarah, Kody soon developed into a happy, healthy baby. In no time, he too
was a burst of energy, crawling all over the house like a little dynamo.

Larry said, “He turned into a real live wire just like his sister. Sarah doted on
her baby brother. There was a real bond between those two. I was real proud of both
my kids. They were also very kind, and they always shared with others. I don’t even
know how much of that was learned. It was just who they were.”

Larry’s mother, Esther, recalled that Sarah and Kody both loved bicycles. “We started
out with little ones and worked our way up to big kids’ bikes. I would watch them
ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk until they got tired. They were so happy.
I always tried to make sure they knew how much I loved them.”

Now, with a growing family, there was even more pressure on Larry and Tina to provide
a good life for them. Because neither Larry or Tina had a college education, the prospect
of good-paying jobs was limited. Larry looked around and discovered that one of the
best paying jobs within his grasp was becoming a long-haul truck driver. The work
suited him—he’d wanted to drive a large truck since he was five years old, when he’d
sat in the cab of a relative’s truck and imagined how it would be to be behind the
wheel of such a large vehicle.

Larry knew that he could make a good long-haul truck driver, but he also knew the
job would be a double-edged sword. Even though the money was good, it would take him
away from Tina and the kids for extended periods of time. At the kids’ young age,
they would be changing all the time, and Larry wouldn’t be able to see those changes
for weeks at a time.

Larry recalled, “I began trucking all over America. Mainly because I wanted Sarah
and Kody to have a nice home. The company was based in Florida, and I would haul roses
and other plants to mom-and-pop florist shops all over the eastern states. I’d also
drive out to California and other western states. There were times I wouldn’t be home
for six to eight weeks, because I’d be driving a load to some place and then picking
up another load there. That way, I wouldn’t be driving empty trailers on a return
trip.

“All of this put a lot of stress on me and Tina. She was working too, at a Meijer’s
[grocery] store by that time, and also having to raise the kids a lot on her own.
It got to be like Tina and I were passing by each other right in our own home. I’d
be there for just a little while, and then back on the road again. Even when I was
home, I was pretty tired. It was like Tina and I were becoming strangers to each other.”

Tina and the kids lived with Larry’s grandmother in a nice house in the township of
Hamilton, south of Columbus. It was a pretty suburban area surrounded by fields and
orchards. The locale had a small-town feel to it, much as Reynoldsburg had.

From Ohio to New York or Florida, from Ohio to California and Washington State, Larry’s
trucking took him on multiweek runs. He began to know the inside of his truck cab
better than he did his own home. There were still good times with the family, trips
to the Columbus Zoo, rides for the kids at amusement parks and barbecues. But these
times were like islands in an ocean.

Cracks started developing in the relationship between Larry and Tina, and as time
went on they became wider and wider. Tina wanted a man who was there to help her raise
Sarah and Kody. She felt frustrated and lonely. For his part, Larry wanted to provide
for Tina and their two kids but had to be on the road in order to do so. The arguments
between Larry and Tina became cyclical and seemingly unsolvable, and they were inexorably
drifting apart.

Finally the rift was too large to patch any longer. In anger and frustration, Tina
moved out of the house with Sarah and Kody. Larry was devastated. He recalled, “There
was real anger between us at first. I felt betrayed and so did she. There was some
yelling and accusations. It was not a happy time.”

One thing neither Larry nor Tina ever did was use Sarah and Kody as bargaining chips
against the other. They both knew that no matter what, they were still the children’s
parents.

As time eased the bitterness, both Larry and Tina realized that it was circumstances
more than character flaws that had driven them apart. At heart, they were both good
people who wanted the best for Sarah and Kody, and at some level, they still both
loved each other.

Larry said later, “I couldn’t stay angry at Tina. She was the first love of my life.
She was the mother of my children. There wasn’t a mean bone in her body. But the truck
driving was just too much for the both of us.”

THREE

Sarah and Kody

Tina, Sarah and Kody got an apartment in the town of Hilliard, a suburban area like
Reynoldsburg and Hamilton, on the west side of Columbus, Ohio. Even though they were
no longer under the same roof, Larry said, “I wanted to see as much of my kids as
I could. I was really proud of both of them. They did really well in school, and both
Sarah and Kody were very athletic.

“You know how kids can be pretty mean at times. Excluding others from their group.
Unpopular kids are kind of pushed to the side. But when Kody saw that kind of thing,
he would go out of his way to include those kinds of kids. And he wouldn’t allow any
bullying around him.

“That was the thing about both Kody and Sarah. They had kind hearts. Maybe it was
because they were generally upbeat and happy, that they didn’t like to see sadness
in other kids. I got together with them every chance I got.”

Despite seeing his kids once in a while, Larry was also lonely. In 2005 he met a pretty,
dark-eyed brunette named Tracy, and before long they started dating. Tracy had a sweet
way about her, was charming and always wanted others to feel comfortable. Where Tina
was rambunctious and outspoken, Tracy was quiet and calm. The women, however, did
have at least one characteristic in common: a caring nature—they were very loyal to
friends and family, and good people at heart.

Shortly after they started dating, Larry and Tracy married and began a new life together.
A son, AJ, was born in 2006; like Kody, he was a good and caring boy, and he loved
his big brother, Kody, and big sister, Sarah.

Life for Tina was changing as well. She met a man named Greg Borders who worked at
the Target Distribution Center where she was employed, and they began dating. After
a while they moved into an apartment together with Kody and Sarah in Hilliard, and
as luck would have it, they soon had new neighbors down the street—Larry, Tracy and
their baby boy, AJ.

By now, any acrimony between Tina and Larry was a thing of the past. He said later,
“We had matured by then. And we both loved our kids. We didn’t want to argue in front
of them or about them. Both Tina and I wanted the best for them.”

In a lot of ways it was a convenient situation. Larry got to see Sarah and Kody more
often than he had in the past few years. In fact, by 2006 it was one of the happiest
times of his life. Larry was driving now locally rather than on the long-distance
trips that had taken him away for weeks at a stretch. Larry said, “We’d have Sarah
and Kody over for three or four days at a time. I was driving locally, so I got to
see them a lot.

“I’d toss a football around with Kody, and we’d do things together like any father
and son. I was real proud of my kids. They both did well in school and were just happy-go-lucky
kids. Sarah and Kody would squabble about things, as a brother and sister will do,
but basically they got along. When Kody played junior league football, Sarah actually
became a cheerleader for the team.”

Tina’s mother, Barbara Herrmann, recalled of Tina around this time, “She was a fun-loving
hard worker and very caring mother. She loved dolphins and sunflowers, but most of
all she enjoyed watching and cheering on her children as they participated in sports.
Kody was a good student and loved playing guitar in his spare time. And Sarah was
very athletic.”

Everything might have gone along in that manner, but then the economy intervened.
The boom times in America were over. In 2008 Tracy lost her job. Soon thereafter,
Larry was also laid off. Desperate for money, he decided to take a truck-driving job
in Kentucky. Once again he knew it would take him away from Sarah and Kody for long
periods of time, but now he had Tracy and AJ to take care of too.

Larry and his family moved down to Kentucky, and he began hauling fuel for a mining
company there. His visits with Sarah and Kody were now confined to birthdays and around
the holidays. It was disappointing, but times were very lean, and Larry and Tracy
were happy to just have a roof over their heads and a paycheck coming in.

This situation went on for about a year and a half, and then Larry was offered a truck-driving
job in Florida. Despite being even farther from Ohio, Larry decided that it was worth
the better pay and the better environment for his family, so he, Tracy and AJ moved
down there.

One day out of the blue, Larry received a surprise phone call from Tina. She said
she was thinking of moving down there with Sarah and Kody to live near him in Florida.
She said nothing of Greg being part of the move, and Larry assumed that meant she
was breaking up with him. Larry was all for this move, since he would be able to see
his kids more often. He encouraged Tina to start making plans to move there.

But Tina got other advice from her father. He said she should hang on to the new job
she had found after getting laid off in 2008. Good jobs were not easy to find in Florida
in a bad economy. Perhaps swayed by this reasoning, Tina decided to stay in Ohio.

She did make one profound move, however. Looking around for a nice area in which to
raise her kids, she decided on Apple Valley, an upscale community five miles east
of the county seat of Mount Vernon in Knox County, and about fifty miles northeast
of Columbus.

Greg, Tina, Sarah and Kody moved to Apple Valley, a picturesque spot located on a
beautiful lake. There were several beaches for swimming, and large stretches of water
for boating and fishing. Some of the more luxurious homes were lakefront properties,
with boat docks and piers. The surrounding area, marked by rolling hills and myriad
trees, offered lots of space for kids to run around, and the town had a good school
system. It was, simply, a great place for kids to grow up.

Their new home was situated on King Beach Drive, with a large backyard for the kids
to play in. It was somewhat isolated from the other homes, with farmland beginning
just across the road that ran on one side of the house. Instead of houses across the
street, there was a large patch of woods. Nonetheless, the area seemed like a safe
environment for the kids. Nothing really bad had ever happened in Apple Valley.

Not only was the location ideal, Tina quickly became very good friends with Stephanie
Sprang, forty-one, who lived only two houses away on Magers Drive. Stephanie was just
as lively as Tina, and the two got together to go shopping, took turns watching each
other’s kids, and enjoyed just hanging out with one another. Sarah and Kody would
often play with Stephanie’s three children. The elder boy, named Michael, was in his
late teens; her daughter, Trish, was a little older than Sarah; and her other son,
Seth, was younger than Kody. All of the kids got along well, which made the friendship
between Tina and Stephanie even better.

Tina and Greg did go in together on buying the house, but there was a downside: while
Tina’s job at a Dairy Queen restaurant was local, Greg had to drive almost sixty miles
each way to the Target Distribution Center. It meant he had to get up around three
in the morning, which was no small inconvenience, but he endured it.

In 2010, Larry’s grandmother moved into a nursing home, leaving him the house in Hamilton.
He’d always had fond memories of the place, and he and Tracy decided to leave Florida
and move there. It was a very nice suburban house with a large yard, and even though
Columbus was just up the highway a few miles away, the new home felt as if it was
more in the country than in the city.

And as luck would have it, Larry got a job offer to deliver fuel to gas stations in
the region. It seemed like an ideal opportunity. Not only would he, Tracy and AJ be
able to live in an area they liked, but Larry would again be able to see Sarah and
Kody on a more regular basis.

Sarah and Kody continued to do well in school, and Sarah joined the softball team.
She was very good at it, and her team even played in a regional competition.

Kody took up baseball and by the age of ten, was an excellent pitcher. One of Larry’s
favorite photos of Kody was of him winding up on the pitcher’s mound.

Tina spent more and more time with her friend Stephanie Sprang. Stephanie, just like
Tina, was bubbly and the life of the party. One of Stephanie’s cousins echoed Larry’s
words about Tina when she said, “Stephanie would walk into a room and light it up.
She just had that kind of personality. She laughed a lot and seemed like a happy person.
Stephanie and Tina were the best of friends and did everything together around Apple
Valley.”

Stephanie had worked at a golf course for many years, but by 2009 she did odd jobs
around Mount Vernon and Apple Valley to make extra money. One of those jobs took her
to Columbus Road in Mount Vernon to work at the house of a strange young man. A young
man who liked climbing up into trees.

In August of 2010, Larry and Kody had one of their most memorable experiences. Kody
had always told Larry he wanted to go night fishing. One evening Larry got some bait,
loaded up an ice chest with hot dogs and soft drinks and took Kody out to a lake.
Larry later said, “He had a blast. Kody was the only one to catch some fish, and he
was real proud of that fact. And they were good-sized fish. It was something that
was just fun for a father and son to do. I looked forward to a lot more times like
that with him. Just me and Kody going out to do fishing or whatever. That August,
I thought we had all the time in the world to do things like that.”

There was another trip, in October 2010, that Tracy Maynard recalled fondly. She said
later, “On October 24, 2010, I took Sarah, 13, Kody, 11, AJ, 4, and Payton, 2, [Larry
and Tracy’s youngest boy who was born in 2008] to the Columbus Zoo. It was ‘Boo at
the Zoo,’ a Halloween event for kids. All the kids enjoyed riding the rides there,
and they didn’t want to leave until the zoo closed. On the drive home, we laughed
and talked about everyday things. I dropped [Sarah and Kody] off at their mom’s house
and gave them a hug good-bye. I told them we’d soon go to the Wild Lights at the Zoo,
which was a pre-Christmas event.”

But fate would intervene before that took place.

* * *

The small city of Mount Vernon was a picture-postcard kind of town. Compared to the
inner city problems of Cincinnati, Cleveland or even nearby Columbus, Mount Vernon’s
troubles were few and far between. With its large brick courthouse, post office, city
hall and churches, it seemed a small-town paradise where residents reveled in a sedate,
comfortable way of life. Crime was so infrequent, many people still left their doors
unlocked day and night. If there seemed a constant in the area, it was a feeling of
contentment.

But there was one individual in its midst who was not content. Matthew John Hoffman
was a troubled and angry young man, living in his two-story house on Columbus Road.
He felt he’d been dealt some bad cards in his life, and there was a fire burning deep
inside him, about ready to burst out of control. And by November 2010, that explosion
was only hours away.